


let me hear your confessions

by theredhoodie



Series: little slice of el rey [3]
Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Married Life, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 03:21:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2566421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredhoodie/pseuds/theredhoodie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All of these confessions are already helping them move onward, leaving their pasts behind in the dust and open expanses of the northern deserts. Kate chalks it up on the new apartment shaking loose their fears and reminding them that life is always shifting and even the most stubborn of people can change their ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let me hear your confessions

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a little insane, but I love this little world I've created. Sometimes, I just need to put characters into situations that aren't so terrible for them. And then you get little series like this one. I have no idea how many pieces of this I'll end up making! Keep your eyes peeled. :)

"I swear to God, woman," Seth growls out, snatching the box out of Kate's hands.

"Excuse you," Kate says, offended by the light use of His name. "I'm pregnant, not incapable."

Seth grumbles and rolls his eyes, taking the box out of her hands anyway. "You shouldn't be lifting things! The doctor said—"

"The doctor said you'll let me help you move into the new place or I will be taking your favorite appendage," Kate threatens.

Richie's laughter floats up the stairs. He has two boxes in his arms and he rests them on the bannister of the main staircase in the middle of the building. "I would believe her, if I were you, Seth." He tilts his head and Seth rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah. Got the keys, hotshot?" Seth waves his hand and Richie fishes around in his jacket for the new key to the new place. He tosses it over and Seth unlocks the door marked 3B.

"Besides, if you wanted to help the pregnant lady, you'd have gotten us an apartment on a first floor," Kate sighs, stepping forward and over the threshold.

The new apartment is almost filled with everything the three of them own. Everything doesn't quite fill the larger size, but it's familiar and homey and she already loves it. The new places has three bedrooms and a full sized kitchen, a living room and hell, even a little balcony that looked out over the decline of a hill.

The three of them pooled their money to afford it—even though Kate had to give up her night lessons to the adults of the city and tourists too, since the only dancing she could do now was with Richie in the living room. She could, however, still teach the little ones for another few weeks, both on the dance floor and in the classroom, where she taught English as a foreign language.

She is already missing the intense dance routines.

It has been hard enough to pack up her and Seth's entire lives from that little apartment and move all the way across town. Now their things were mixing with Richie's and everything was falling into place.

They needed to be a we-three, not a two-and-a-third-wheel. It never felt right, but the one bedroom place she and Seth lived in for years was the only thing they could afford for a long while. Richie floated around, sometimes he had a place to sleep, sometimes he didn't and he just used Seth and Kate's place.

But that won't happen anymore.

And while Kate already misses the small cramped kitchen, this place is really nice. She loves it already.

"I'm at least gonna unpack some of these boxes," Kate insists as the brothers add their boxes to the piles growing in the middle of the living room.

"Fine, fine," Seth says, shaking his head and looking across the room at her.

Kate feels as big as a house, even though she's just over six months pregnant, but she can still hike up the three flights of stairs multiple times a day and she can unpack dishes and clothes. Feeling useless isn't something she's willing to submit to. She has never been the type of person who feared until she cracked. No matter how many times she tries to tell herself that her past didn't happen—that those few hours of terror that changed her life forever are just a bad memory—sometimes she has to think about it and remind herself that she's stronger than some poufy housewife.

"You're looking at home already," Seth says, waving a hand toward her.

Kate blinks and shrugs a shoulder. "Oh, I just enjoy seeing my men working for me," she teases.

"Didn't you just say that you didn't want us to do all all the work?" Seth points out, crossing the room in small steps.

Kate raises her eyebrows and crosses her arms. "I don't, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy having you both do things for me. Do you know how long it's been since you two have actually worked together like this?"

Seth slides his hands over the sides of her belly to her back and looks into her eyes. "Getting a little hot and bothered there, princess?"

Kate rolls her eyes and pries his hands away. "No, I just wish I'd been able to see you two really working together." She peeks around him at Richie, who's setting the boxes into piles per room. "Not that I want  _either_  of you two to start heisting again, alright? I mean it."

"Yes, ma'am," Richie says over his shoulder.

Kate steps around Seth and joins Richie, picking up one of the boxes labeled clothes. It's light. "Why don't you bring up the rest of the boxes," she says to Seth, despite the protest that grows in his chest. "Richie, help me with these."

Richie raises his eyebrows for a second and makes a face at Seth, who rolls his eyes and waves a hand, closing the door behind him.

Kate shuffles into Seth's room. The king sized bed from her and Seth's place is there. The other room is Richie's, and Kate's destined to swap between them whenever she feels the need. The third room, of course, is for the baby, who is a big, if not  _the biggest_  reason why they made this change in their lives.

Richie sets two boxes down on the floor in the corner. All of them are Seth or Kate's, since Richie's all came from the same place and were more easily set away in drawers and closets.

Kate sits on the bed and pulls open the top of the box she set there.

"Can I talk to you?" Richie breaks the silence. It's comfortable silence. The silence between them has never been uncomfortable.

Kate looks up at him—really up considering she's sitting and sitting automatically makes her many inches shorter than her usual petite height—and nods, a small little smile on her face. "Sure. Is something wrong?"

Richie pushes the box back and takes its place next to her. "I don't know," he says, which surprises her, because Richie always knows, he's the one that knows everything and  _more_.

Kate waits for him to say something more, but he doesn't. His eyes slip off into somewhere else and it takes Kate reaching for his hand to shake him out of it.

"I'm worried," he says, which is weird, again, because he isn't a worrier. Neither of the brothers is very good at worrying without hiding it behind walls of concrete, but if any of them showed their worry, it was Seth.

"Worried?" Kate echoes. She pulls her leg up—literally, she has to let go of Richie's hand for a moment to move around enough to get her leg bent onto the mattress—so she can see him better and takes his hand again. She presses it between her smaller palms. "What are you worried about?"

Richie lets out a long breath, taking his time answering. "Has Seth talked to you about any of this?"

"This what? Baby stuff?" She takes a leap that he's worried about the baby and not about the move. The move is simple, easy. A baby? Not so much, especially with their collective histories. "Richie…"

"I've killed people, Kate," he says, looking at her finally, meeting her mossy green gaze with his ice cold blue. "So has Seth. But I've… _killed_  people."

He emphasizes it because he needs to. There's a difference between the killing he's done and the killing his brother has done. Seth never willingly took anyone's life, he never calculated the exact execution, not like Richie has.

Kate sucks in a sharp breath and she feels a chill down her spine. All of them did their best to move on and start with a fresh slate here, after the trail of bloodshed and the completely insane evening involving killing  _vampires_  in a strip joint on top of an ancient Aztec tomb.

"I know you have," Kate says softly, rubbing her thumb gently over the back of his hand. "I've killed people too, y'know. And don't you dare tell me that what I did was any different than what you've done." Her tone slips to an emotional reminder of what she lost in the tunnels of that temple. Not only her naïve innocence, but her father and her brother.

Richie's lip part and he doesn't nod or move in any other way. He just sits there and doesn't argue, because there's nothing to argue. All three of them have more blood on their hands than they could ever wash clean. The best they could hope to do is to move on and let the red stains fade over time.

"I killed my father," Richie says. Kate knows this, from Seth. Richie's never said so to her before, even through all these years. "I was just a kid, and I killed him. I don't even regret it. Never have."

Kate lifts his hand, pressing her lips against his knuckles for a moment before looking up at him. "Richie," she says, voice as light as clouds. "Why are you telling me all of this?"

He raises his eyebrows a little, expecting a different response from her. He should have known better than to think Kate would get angry with him. "I just don't think I'm really the best person to have around when—"

"What?" She interrupts him with a loud tone and drops his hand. It brushes against her stomach and lands on her leg. "You better not finish that sentence or I will get Seth to beat you up."

"I'm serious."

Kate shakes her head and presses her lips into a line. "No. You are staying, that's final. We went through this before, remember? Package deal, the three of us. We're better together, we all know it."

"Or we just keep telling ourselves that to make up for the fact that we're not, in fact, better together."

Kate sighs. "For a genius, you are incredibly stupid. You're not going anywhere. I won't let you." She lifts her hands then and slides her palms over his cheeks, the tips of her index and middle fingers brushing the frames of his glasses. "We need you. Seth needs you. I need you."

"Kate…" Richie lets out a breath through his nose and tries to protest again but Seth bangs through the front door and interrupts them even tucked away down the hall in this room.

Kate shakes her head and leans up to kiss Riche. The kiss is long and warm and needy, broken only by the sounds of something breaking and Seth cursing. "Don't think about leaving ever again or I will shoot you myself," she says to Richie. She leaves him sitting on the bed, the boxes of clothes barely even touched.

 

 

 

 

They've officially moved completely out of the tiny apartment. They handed in the keys and have a new place to call home now. There are still boxes scattered around the place, but at least half of them have been emptied into cabinets and drawers and closets.

The moon has slid into the sky, shining through the window in Seth's bedroom. They haven't gotten curtains up yet, and even if they did, they don't have enough to cover all of the bedroom windows yet.

Kate is on the verge of sleep. The bed is comfortable and familiar. Even though she spent the evening craving the boyishly possessive touches of Richie, they had to put  _something_  in his room to sleep on, and that was a tiny mattress that barely fit a single person, much less two.

"Kate." Seth's voice drags her from the comforting embrace of slumber. He's scooted across the bed and is lying on his back next to her. She and Seth often end up opposite sides of bed while they're sleeping. Kate sometimes thought it was just them awaiting the moment for Richie to arrive and take up the rest of the space.

"Yeah?" she says, voice soft and barely there. She doesn't open her eyes, but she runs her hands over the covers, all lumpy around her growing belly.

Seth lets out a small breath between parted lips. "You had a great dad."

Kate didn't know if she'd call Jacob Fuller father of the year, but he did love her and Scott unconditionally and he only tried to do what he thought was best for them after Jennifer died. Kate opens her eyes and turns her head toward Seth. She can make out his profile in the dim rays from the sliver of moon hanging in the cosmos.

"And, you're gonna be a great mom."

Kate sighs and lifts one of her arms, brushing the back of her hand against Seth's arm that is folded over the blanket. "Seth," she says, conveying a thousand things with the one word. She knows he's going to keep going anyway, but she's already working up a rebuttal to his Gecko logic.

"I never had a mom," he continues, eyes still trained toward the ceiling, "and my dad…well."

"He must have been a terrible person," Kate says softly. Mostly because she knows, and needs, that to be true. If Richie killed him, she needs to know that he had a very good reason.

"You could say that," Seth says, shifting a little on the mattress and glancing over at her. "I've got no good experiences with dads."

The words hung between them. Kate wants to say something, but she can feel that Seth isn't finished, so she keeps quiet and waits.

"I just don't want to turn into my old man," he says finally.

"Oh," Kate says softly. She takes in a breath and lets it out, takes in another and rolls onto her side, propping her head up with her hand. She slides her hand down his arm and pushes her fingers through his, her palm pressing against the back of his hand. "Seth, you're not going to turn into your father."

"How do you know that?"

Kate sighs and closes her eyes for a moment. "Because, while you haven't been a saint or a good person all of the time, you're not a terrible person. I've known you for six years, remember? You've never hurt me, you've never done anything but protect me."

Seth sucks in a breath and shakes his head, still unconvinced.

"Besides, just worrying about turning into your dad shows that you're not like him. Everything's gonna be fine, remember?" She smiles softly and leans down to kiss him on the cheek.

He lets a breath out of his nose and looks up at her, eyes barely catching the light from the window. "You keep saying that."

She nods. "If I say it enough times, it'll come true."

Seth lifts her hand with his and kisses her soft skin. "Thanks."

She just nods and rolls herself off the bed and onto her feet. She walks around the bed and out the door, down the hall to the bathroom. There's just one, but it's a little bigger than the bathroom at the last apartment. She half closes the door and pees, something she does a lot more of lately.

Flushing the toilet probably wakes the entire building, but Kate does it anyway and stands in front of the sink. The light isn't on, but she can still feel her way around to turn on the faucets and wash her hands.

She's been through this many times, the thought of going through all of this without her parents, without her mom to tell her what to do and what to expect, without her father insisting on furnishing the entire nursery and without her brother making both gross and endearing comments about the entire situation. Kate knows she's not alone, she has the brothers and a handful of acquaintances from the years of living here in this town, but it's not the same.

"Kate?" Richie's voice cuts through her thoughts. Kate turns off the water and sniffs, rubbing her wet hands over her equally wet eyes, thankful for the darkness. "You okay?"

She nods, though he's probably not wearing his glasses so he  _definitely_  wouldn't be able to see her. "Yeah," she says, stepping toward the doorway with an arm outstretched. Her hand brushes over his arm and she finds his hand. She steps a little closer and slips her other arm around his back, half hugging him and squeezing her eyes against his shirt. He holds onto her and they stand in silence as the seconds tick by before Kate opens her eyes and steps back. "C'mon," she says, taking his hand again and letting him trail behind her down the hall, past his room.

Seth has already moved over to his side of the bed and looks like he's actually trying to fall asleep. He cracks open an eye and mumbles something neither of them can distinguish from guttural sounds. It's a little chilly, so Richie gets under the covers and Kate, while wanting to be nestled between them, but knowing she'll have to get up a few times in the night to pee again, ends up next to Richie on her side of the bed.

With enough shifting around to make sure Seth's fully awake, the three of them settle down.

"You know, for two former criminals, I think you both are more afraid of being dads than you were afraid of fighting those monsters in that temple," Kate says, voice light despite the implications of all three things she touched on: their pasts, their mutual fears of fatherhood and the night of horrors that brought all of them together.

They both try to protest, but fail.

“It’s fine,” Kate sighs. “I love you both anyway. For some reason,” she adds with a laugh that lightly fills the room.

"Get some sleep Kate," Seth says from across the mattress.

Kate rolls over onto her side and wraps Richie's arm around her, her shoulder blades touching his chest. She laces her fingers with his and settles down against the pillows. All of these confessions are already helping them move onward, leaving their pasts behind in the dust and open expanses of the northern deserts. Kate chalks it up on the new apartment shaking loose their fears and reminding them that life is always shifting and even the most stubborn of people can change their ways.


End file.
